When Beyonce's acclaimed popular video album Lemonade came out, its visual and cultural reference points were so specific and fully formed, many wanted to know more about its references. Inevitably, Julie Dash's acclaimed film Daughters of the Dust came up, and soon enough, an entirely new and younger audience was watching Dash's masterpiece, comparing it with the work of Queen Bey. Indeed, the curiosity about Daughters of the Dust was so immense as a result of the album, that it helped spur a restoration and re-release of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016.
Lemonade owes much of its inspiration, both aesthetic and thematic, to Daughters of the Dust. Lemonade took inspiration for many shots from Dash's film. For example, a scene in Lemonade in which a group of black women in white flowing dresses sit in a giant lush tree, an obvious reference to Mary and Trula in the willow. Beautiful landscapes, shot in widescreen, abound in Lemonade, and often showcase lush natural and waterfront locations, as in Dash's film. At one point, Beyonce and a number of background dancers walk in white dresses along the shoreline, yet another reference to Dash's film. Additionally, Lemonade explores similar cultural and thematic threads as Daughters of the Dust, examining a female black experience of a mythic antebellum South, questions of time and memory, and the black re-narrativization of the African diaspora as a story of family, matriarchy, and empowerment.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Dash spoke about the reference points in Lemonade and praised the work of both Beyonce and Solange, saying "they reimagine and redefine the diaspora." On the night of the release of Lemonade, Daughters of the Dust was trending on Twitter, and Dash's website shut down, a very unexpected occurrence for a filmmaker who has gotten used to obscurity in Hollywood. In an interview with Vogue, Dash said, "I think the rerelease idea came about after [Beyoncé made] Lemonade. We had already worked on scanning the negative for the Blu-ray, to convert the film from the 35mm print to the digital space. While we were doing that, all of a sudden this thing called Lemonade came about, and everyone was like, “What?” Everyone was like, “Have you seen Lemonade?”"
